Proposal for alternative to Northern Powerhouse Rail

[Palmerston]

Reform have notionally backed a proposal to cancel Northern Powerhouse Rail and suggest using the savings for an underground 4 platform through station in Manchester, among other things. I suspect better qualified people than me can pull some of this apart.

Instead of high-speed rail - Policy Exchange

Download Publication Online Reader The Government says it will soon “set out further details on our plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail,” NPR, a new high-speed scheme from Liverpool to Manchester and Leeds. It has recently been briefed to journalists – and not denied – that ministers will commit...

policyexchange.org.uk

Feel free to move this to a different thread if sensible to do so.

 

[Bevan Price]

I am not convinced that a new High Speed line between Liverpool & Manchester is needed - what is needed is more capacity, and there are probably less expensive options than HSNorth. ;

 

[Bletchleyite]

A start would be longer trains. The Blackpool North line seems to be the only place this has really been done, and 6x24 is fairly pathetic by South East standards. Why for instance don't we operate two Liverpool to Newcastle "proper" ICs per hour using something like a nine or ten car IET?

 

[Grimsby town]

I am not convinced that a new High Speed line between Liverpool & Manchester is needed - what is needed is more capacity, and there are probably less expensive options than HSNorth. ;

There are cheaper options but they likely deliver less capacity improvements. Gilligan doesn't know what he's on about. Complete rubbish about a tunnel across Manchester delivering 30-60 additonal trains per hour completely ignores that these trains would have to run on to two track mixed traffic lines, most of which are already at capacity. Gilligan partially acknowledges the need to upgrade lines feeding into a cross Manchester tunnel, but doesn't provide a cost estimate. The simple fact is lines like Chat Moss, the Stockport corridor, CLC, and Salford to Bolton are practically impossible to four track.

 

[stevieinselby]

A start would be longer trains. The Blackpool North line seems to be the only place this has really been done, and 6x24 is fairly pathetic by South East standards. Why for instance don't we operate two Liverpool to Newcastle "proper" ICs per hour using something like a nine or ten car IET?

Because the sensible thing is to run them beyond Manchester, rather than just shuttling 35 miles backwards and forwards, to give wider connectivity ... but some other key stations that they would call at can't accommodate trains that size – notably Huddersfield, which up until the TRU works has been capped at 5-car trains (or more with SDO, but you don't want to be locking out 4 or 5 carriages on an intercity train at a major station). And unless you are running through to the east coast then there is no point in running intercity trains on a journey that is max 40 minutes end-to-end and can't break 90mph.

 

[eldomtom2]

"Avanti runs 48 trains a day from Manchester to London, 48 Pendolinos is around 27,000 seats, there's an average of 9,300 passengers per day between Manchester and Euston, therefore there are no WCML capacity issues" is such impressively bad logic I'm shocked that they said it, yet they do just that on page 36:

Avanti West Coast runs 48 trains every weekday from Manchester to London, providing just over 27,000 seats in this direction each weekday. The Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, says that in 2023/4 there were 3.4 million rail journeys between Manchester and Camden (the London
borough in which Euston, the WCML terminus, sits.) That is an average of 9,300 per day.
Thus across the average day only about a third of the service’s current seating capacity from Manchester to London is used. At 2 per cent growth per year, it would take 53 years, not the claimed 12, to fill it. Of course, more passengers will join at intermediate stops (though Manchester is by far the busiest); some trains will be busier than others; there are slightly fewer trains at weekends; and about 4,700 of the 27,000 seats are first class, though first class passengers are also included in the 9,300 daily total.
The figures clearly do not, however, support any claim that the WCML is full, or nearly full, or is going to be full any time soon.

 

[mike57]

I have to agree, planning a new high speed line is pointless, and will not happen (as in boots on the ground) in any foreseeable timeframe. Like it or not, HS2 has killed off any future high speed rail projects in the UK for a generation.

To be honest the distances dont lend themselves to proper (~180mph/300kph) high speed rail, Liverpool Manchester is under 40 miles, Manchester Leeds is 45miles and Leeds York is just over 25 miles, which is the main transpennine northern route. Aim for a 100mph railway.

4 tracks where it can be delivered without significant demolition, e.g. east of Leeds - Crossgates, 3 tracks from Huddersfield to Marsden, maybe as a reversible 'overtaking track', and the big one, get the electrification finished.

In the wider picture on northern (as in area not TOC) routes, if more capacity is needed it needs to be delivered by longer trains not increasing frequency. There are still far too many 2 and 3 car trains running on a network that is 'at capacity'. For the Newcastle - Liverpool service this needs a minimum 8 car service hourly as a 'proper' Intercity service.

That then leaves the issue of Manchester City centre, the current arrangements are a bodge, that has evolved over many decades, and is now not fit for purpose. Short term use the space beyond Platform 1 at Piccadilly to create maybe two more platforms for services terminating from the east. Dont try and run TPE on to the airport, operationaly its a pain. Run the airport service as a self contained shuttle from a pair of dedicated platforms, maybe 10/11

That then leaves Castlefield, I agree that a tunneled east west route, connecting the routes from Stalybridge and Rochdale with Chat Moss and CLC routes to Liverpool and possibly a spur to the airport is the optimum choice, retaining Castlefield for local services, but in the current climate that seems like pie in the sky. Even the proposed Platform 15/16 at Piccadilly and associated Castlefield improvements seem unlikely

Given the wider political and economic situation I would be very surprised if any funding is forthcoming in the next 5 years or so. No doubt lip service will be paid, but as for any actual work starting beyond that which is currently in progress (Dewsbury - Huddersfield), I just dont see it happening.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Because the sensible thing is to run them beyond Manchester

It's not a zero cost option, but just lengthening platforms (and ASDO) may be a better investment than whole new lines.

I am absolutely proposing to run to the East Coast. The Liverpool-Newcastle fasts need to be a proper long-trains, full-service InterCity route.

I'd be looking at a Nordtakt with half hourly services and long trains rather than frequency increases.

 

[Ken H]

TPU is disappointing given the long timescales. why is project completion posted as 2041?
Surely some easy bits could be done quickly. Leeds - Crossgates and Leeds - Morley should be doable for 2037 All the drawings are done so it a matter of sticking the wires up. Same for Church Fenton - Garforth. And why is Huddersfield - Marsden not reopening with most of the slewing done and masts erected?

 

[L+Y]

Read the report last night, and while some parts of it had me raising an eyebrow, I thought it was broadly well-researched and made some good points. I have never particularly seen the logic behind the Liverpool -> Warrington -> Airport -> Piccadilly HS route. I also liked the stuff challenging some of the comparisons of the North of England to the Rhineland or Netherlands that are frequently trotted out.

I also think it's inarguable that Britain's current fiscal climate means it's an either/or between HSR and conventional upgrades. And if there's to be a single "big bang" megaproject, I think the benefits of Manchester tunnel far, far outweighs those provided by the proposed NPR route.

 

[stevieinselby]

TPU is disappointing given the long timescales. why is project completion posted as 2041?
Surely some easy bits could be done quickly. Leeds - Crossgates and Leeds - Morley should be doable for 2037 All the drawings are done so it a matter of sticking the wires up. Same for Church Fenton - Garforth. And why is Huddersfield - Marsden not reopening with most of the slewing done and masts erected?

Some bits might be able to be done quickly but that doesn't mean the project as a whole can be.
Completion is when it's, um, complete.
One of the reasons it takes so long is the need to maintain some level of operation on the railway, albeit with short possessions. If they could close the line completely then they could get it done much quicker – but the disruption to travel that that would entail would be seen as unacceptable – you can't tell people "your train service is going to be improved but in the meantime you're going to have no trains at all for the next 8 years".

 

[Brubulus]

Some bits might be able to be done quickly but that doesn't mean the project as a whole can be.
Completion is when it's, um, complete.
One of the reasons it takes so long is the need to maintain some level of operation on the railway, albeit with short possessions. If they could close the line completely then they could get it done much quicker – but the disruption to travel that that would entail would be seen as unacceptable – you can't tell people "your train service is going to be improved but in the meantime you're going to have no trains at all for the next 8 years".

That's why new lines are such a good idea. I genuinely can't believe that TRU is actually cheaper than building a new railway between Manchester and Leeds. (Assuming that it uses conventional stations and approaches). Especially once cost of disruption is taken into account.

 

[nr758123]

I genuinely can't believe that TRU is actually cheaper than building a new railway between Manchester and Leeds.

All those hill and urban areas in between might have something to do with it.

 

[Peter749]

A start would be longer trains. The Blackpool North line seems to be the only place this has really been done, and 6x24 is fairly pathetic by South East standards. Why for instance don't we operate two Liverpool to Newcastle "proper" ICs per hour using something like a nine or ten car IET?

If you put an extra service on the route you would have to lose another TPE service as it is 5 tph thru Stalybridge - well not at the moment with the blockade at Huddersfield

And watching the trains leaving Victoria before the engineering work started very few of the 5 or 6 coach trains were full outside the peak.

 

[Brubulus]

If you put an extra service on the route you would have to lose another TPE service as it is 5 tph thru Stalybridge - well not at the moment with the blockade at Huddersfield

And watching the trains leaving Victoria before the engineering work started very few of the 5 or 6 coach trains were full outside the peak.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure there used to be 2tph Liverpool-Newcastle, but they were very close together.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you put an extra service on the route you would have to lose another TPE service as it is 5 tph thru Stalybridge - well not at the moment with the blockade at Huddersfield

I'm not convinced a through Scarborough past Leeds is necessary. It's not a big destination from the North West compared to Newcastle etc. Nor is there likely to be much demand to go to Liverpool from there.

 

[Technologist]

"Avanti runs 48 trains a day from Manchester to London, 48 Pendolinos is around 27,000 seats, there's an average of 9,300 passengers per day between Manchester and Euston, therefore there are no WCML capacity issues" is such impressively bad logic I'm shocked that they said it, yet they do just that on page 36:

For avoidance of doubt I assume the reason that this is bollox is because of those 27,000 seats between Manchester and London a significant proportion of those are made up of people who either travel from Manchester and get off before London or are people who get on at an intermediary station between Manchester and London and get off at London or before.

A much better way would just be to look at home many people are on every Pendolino at different times of the day, is such data available in open source?

As a serious suggestion e-mail the think tank, I've done it before and whilst they can be a little slow on the uptake they generally aren't hidebound about changing things, they might have some biases but they generally like to be right and accurate.

To be honest the distances dont lend themselves to proper (~180mph/300kph) high speed rail, Liverpool Manchester is under 40 miles, Manchester Leeds is 45miles and Leeds York is just over 25 miles, which is the main transpennine northern route. Aim for a 100mph railway.

This is why rail fails, if we are talking about a railway that isn't going to operate in the next 10 years were should also be asking what trains we could design to go on it. You might have noticed that due to EV technology you can now buy cars that do sub 4 second 0-60's for mid £30k's (less than the average price of a new car). As a result there is a massive supply chain of electric drive trains that offer massive performance at negligible cost and mass impact.

The limit to train acceleration is thus passenger comfort which on the London underground is limited to around 1.3ms/s, however with EV car motors and battery assist our next generation BEMU will be able to keep that rate of acceleration up until it passes 125mph, hitting 300km/h in 68 seconds and 3km from the start point. So with a 300kph speed and BEMU acceleration rates we could near half the journey time and therefore the number of trains needed to maintain the service. In the table below I compare a class 800 with a BEMU with 22MWe drivetrain limited to a max acceleration of 1.3ms/s (power output is calculated from sizing a battery that would fit into the weight delta between a class 800 and 801).

Variable	100mph class 800	100mph BEMU 1.3ms/s	186mph BEMU 1.3ms/s	225mph BEMU 1.3ms/s
Speed (mph)	100​	100​	186​	225​
Distance between stations (miles)	45​	45​	45​	45​
Distance between stations (m)	72405​	72405​	72405​	72405​
Acceleration Distance (m)	3381.6​	768.3​	2998.2​	4974.3​
Acceleration Time (s)	121.6​	34.4​	68.7​	92.8​
Distance at Cruise (m)	65641.8​	70868.4​	66408.6​	62456.5​
Time at Cruise (s)	1468.7​	1585.6​	798.8​	621.1​
Total time (s)	1711.9​	1654.4​	936.3​	806.7​
Total Time (min)	28.5​	27.6​	15.6​	13.4​

As a secondary benefit shooting for something like this would actually make rail something exciting for lay people, getting on a train that accelerates more like an aircraft taking off will actually be exciting. See Tom Scott's reaction to riding the SC Maglev which accelerates at a similar rate.

Way to sell this would be for GBR to build a BEMU hot-rod and then run it at 200mph on old Dalby (which it could do, accelerate out of a 125mph corner, hit 200, brake for next 125mph corner which is 5km away)

 

[Bletchleyite]

For avoidance of doubt I assume the reason that this is bollox is because of those 27,000 seats between Manchester and London a significant proportion of those are made up of people who either travel from Manchester and get off before London or are people who get on at an intermediary station between Manchester and London and get off at London or before.

Generally speaking the Manchester-London trains are the least busy because there are three an hour. But that doesn't mean the WCML isn't congested. The Scotland services are generally heaving, while the line itself has trains crammed into near enough every path with someone just needing to breathe on it for it to fall over.

 

[nr758123]

they might have some biases but they generally like to be right and accurate

The author of the report is Andrew Gilligan, sometime adviser on transport to both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

 

[Ken H]

The author of the report is Andrew Gilligan, sometime adviser on transport to both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

and a one time BBC journo. He was working on today when the David Kelly death story broke during the Time of Blair as PM. Something to do with weapons inspectors in Iraq. So not a civil engineer or railwayman then.

 

[mike57]

not convinced a through Scarborough past Leeds is necessary. It's not a big destination from the North West compared to Newcastle etc. Nor is there likely to be much demand to go to Liverpool from there.

I would run the Scarborough as a shuttle to York, I use it fairly regularly to and from Seamer to Manchester and its far more reliable when it runs that way even although it means a change. The path across York Station between Leeds and the Scarborough line crosses across the main ECML lines, and through Scarborough trains can only use platforms 5 or 3/4 which is one long platform, so running Scarborough services west of York immediately introduces a lot of failure points in the timetable. When it was/is a through service if its even a few minutes late at York you lose yet more time getting a path through York.

Connectivity is nice, but if reliability suffers then that is a much bigger problem. Its not so bad going west as the train from Scarborough can sit in Platform 4 and wait for for a path through the station so passenger changing are off the treain and making their connections, its going the other way (West to East) that fails on a regular basis, passenger with connections are sat outside York awaiting a platform. Obviously a unidirectional service is a physical impossiblity.

 

[nr758123]

and a one time BBC journo. He was working on today when the David Kelly death story broke during the Time of Blair as PM. Something to do with weapons inspectors in Iraq. So not a civil engineer or railwayman then.

He also credits an organisation called Stone Railway Campaign Group with doing a lot of the work underpinning his report. Not sure who they are, what they stand for and what knowledge or expertise they bring to the proceedings.

 

[Polarbear]

I've had a quick skim-read of the report. Whilst I am unconvinced of the need for a "high speed" link between Liverpool & Manchester, additional track capacity is needed to allow for better local services. On that aspect, I'd agree with some of the points made in the report.

Closer inspection of the report however suggests that the author is very much cherry picking their statistics to support their point. They also don't appear to have the first idea on how a railway actually operates.

Yes, the current TPE services can do Victoria - Lime Street in around 30 minutes, but what about having more local services too?

The comments around Manchester - Euston load factors misses the point (deliberately) that the WCML is close to track capacity. Yet Gilligan is given free reign to spout nonsense in this report.

My view is that in the event Reform were in a position to act on this report, they'd do nothing. They have already suggested that companies thinking about bidding for Northern Powerhouse contracts "shouldn't bother" (not great for installing confidence in UK construction).

These are people who are against High Speed rail and to be fair, that's openly stated in the report. What the report doesn't say is that they are also not particularly supportive of any large scale government spending. There is no way any of the proposals set out in this report will come to fruition - it's just a spoiling tactic.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, the current TPE services can do Victoria - Lime Street in around 30 minutes, but what about having more local services too?

To be fair there is another hourly local path available on Chat Moss, latterly for a Liverpool-Warrington BQ stopping service. However Northern/DfT are choosing not to operate it. Which is stupid, to be fair, 2tph is really the minimum you need on urban/suburban services of that nature.

Whether a Merseyrail style 4tph service (which would require more capacity) is needed is an interesting question.

The other issue of course is that Piccadilly is typically more popular than Victoria, and the NPR Fiddlers Ferry line would go there instead of Victoria - not only that but into the main train shed so a far better experience than 13/14 at the expense of not serving Oxford Road.

 

[Brubulus]

To be fair there is another hourly local path available on Chat Moss, latterly for a Liverpool-Warrington BQ stopping service. However Northern/DfT are choosing not to operate it. Which is stupid, to be fair, 2tph is really the minimum you need on urban/suburban services of that nature.

Whether a Merseyrail style 4tph service (which would require more capacity) is needed is an interesting question.

The other issue of course is that Piccadilly is typically more popular than Victoria, and the NPR Fiddlers Ferry line would go there instead of Victoria - not only that but into the main train shed so a far better experience than 13/14 at the expense of not serving Oxford Road.

So the NPR plan is still going for above-ground reversal instead of an underground through station and reversing siding.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So the NPR plan is still going for above-ground reversal instead of an underground through station and reversing siding.

I believe it is yes.

 

[Peter749]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure there used to be 2tph Liverpool-Newcastle, but they were very close together.

I think the Liverpool - Newcastle became a Liverpool - Hull - which varies between a 185 or 2x 185 or an 802.

 

[Bald Rick]

So not a civil engineer or railwayman then.

Neither, but he does know his railways though. However he is generally convinced he is right about everything to do with railways, which in my opinion is never a good place to be.

 

[Bevan Price]

To be fair there is another hourly local path available on Chat Moss, latterly for a Liverpool-Warrington BQ stopping service. However Northern/DfT are choosing not to operate it. Which is stupid, to be fair, 2tph is really the minimum you need on urban/suburban services of that nature.

Whether a Merseyrail style 4tph service (which would require more capacity) is needed is an interesting question.

The other issue of course is that Piccadilly is typically more popular than Victoria, and the NPR Fiddlers Ferry line would go there instead of Victoria - not only that but into the main train shed so a far better experience than 13/14 at the expense of not serving Oxford Road.

The Liverpool - Warrington BQ service was pointless - very few people used it between Earlestown and Warrington -- I saw the trains frequently whilst photgraphing at Winwick and there were rarely more than a handful on board. The second "local" path should go between Liverpool & Manchester Victoria, maybe continuing to Huddersfield when electrification is complete.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Liverpool - Warrington BQ service was pointless - very few people used it between Earlestown and Warrington -- I saw the trains frequently whilst photgraphing at Winwick and there were rarely more than a handful on board. The second "local" path should go between Liverpool & Manchester Victoria, maybe continuing to Huddersfield when electrification is complete.

The key isn't Warrington (which was a terminus mostly of convenience, though I suppose you could have reversed at Earlestown as nowt else uses that platform) but giving the stations west of Earlestown a decent service. No issues with it going to Vic, but it wasn't "pointless" because it served stations towards Liverpool with 2 rather than 1tph. What you say is a bit like saying the Euston-MKC stopper is pointless because it normally arrives at/departs MKC with a handful on board.